Notebook on a Scandal: Maxim vs. The Black Crowes

Notebook on a Scandal: Maxim vs. The Black Crowes
Photo by Burt Steel / Associated Press

August Brown

Exclusive Maxim scandal updates: David Peisner speaks!

February 28, 2008 12:31pm

To all following this ongoing Maxim-fake-reviews saga (now starring Nas!) who suspected there might be something more devious afoot in Maxim’s editorial policy toward reviews, David Peisner, the Maxim free-lancer responsible for penning the two hypothetical reviews, agrees with you. In an exclusive statement to Soundboard, Peisner writes:

“I’m a freelance writer. I was assigned to write previews of the Black Crowes and Nas albums. I did that. When the issue came out, the previews were laid out as reviews complete with star ratings. I never at any point or to anyone claimed to have heard these albums in their entirety. Whatever decisions Maxim made after I turned in my work were beyond my control.”

We’re currently contacting Maxim for a response to this, but Peisner’s statement might confirm what many have suspected in this whole debacle — that Maxim itself plays fast and loose with its standards towards reviewing. That said, the tone of critical assessment in these ostensible “previews” did seem to imply to readers that Peisner had at least heard the records. But Maxim assigning star ratings and including them in the Reviews section, when according to Peisner the assigning editors had asked for a different piece altogether, is nonetheless a serious misrepresentation of the writer’s access to and judgment of the albums at hand. More to come soon.

Maxim (Kind Of) Aplogizes to Black Crowes

February 26, 2008 1:10pm

In the first recorded instance of tact in its publishing history, Maxim has officially apologized to the Black Crowes for making up a bunch of stuff about what their album might have sounded like if they'd heard it. Says Maxim editorial director James Kaminsky in a statement released today:

"It is Maxim's editorial policy to assign star ratings only to those albums that have been heard in their entirety. Unfortunately, that policy was not followed in the March 2008 issue of our magazine and we apologize to our readers."

A pretty waffling apology, if you ask us. Kaminsky makes it sound like the issue at hand was less "our writer lied outright" than "we gave a specific star rating to a record we didn't quite finish, and a policy was not followed by someone somewhere." Note the Orwell-infuriating use of passive voice, the semantic judo move of saying it wasn't heard in its entirety and the lack of calling out the writer by name (David Peisner, who has apparently also written for Metromix, which is owned by Tribune, which cuts my checks. I actually feel a bit bad for the guy in all this, as it's not impossible that Maxim might have told him to go through with the fake review. Also, there's this punishing bit of irony. "Blaming writers for the sorry state of music criticism today is sort of like blaming inmates for the sorry state of the prison system." Indeed!).

One would think that if Peisner were a rogue reviewer firing off baseless opinions like a critical Yosemite Sam, Maxim would be first in line to distance itself from him, but the magazine didn't here. There's a whiff of malfeasance in the air to Maxim's non-apology, but I guess this is where the magazine is drawing its lines for editorial honesty. Maxim's not supposed to be the Economist or anything, but still. Next they're going to tell me that their top 10 tips for talking your girlfriend into a threesome weren't actually field-tested.

Scandal! Maxim reviews unheard Black Crowes album?

February 22, 2008 6:21pm

Boy, what a week for vague and allusive journalism! A statement from stoner-scuzz rockers the Black Crowes suggests that Maxim’s two-and-a-half star rating for the band’s new album, “Warpaint,” in its March issue was based not on the band’s “slavish debt to the Stones, the Allmans and the Faces,” but on contributor David Peisner’s vivid imagination.

The band is crying shenanigans that because it hadn’t sent out advances of the album, the writer had no way of hearing it, and that Peisner instead hypothesized about what it might sound like. Which, given his wafflingly negative review (featuring non-starter jabs like “Now that they’re legitimately grizzled, they sound pretty much like they always have”), wasn’t all that great. That inventive approach to music criticism is, of course, completely not OK in even the most ethically elastic circles of New Journalism. Black Crowes manager Pete Angelus cites this, allegedly an email from Maxim, as the magazine’s explanation:

“‘Of course, we always prefer to (sic) hearing music, but sometimes there are big albums that we don’t want to ignore that aren’t available to hear, which is what happened with the Crowes. It’s either an educated guess preview or no coverage at all, so in this case we chose the former.’”

Now, every music critic has dealt with the Sophie’s Choice of overlooking an important record or basing a review on scant information, like a junket listening session where you get one pass at an album while label flacks glare at you from across the boardroom. This holds doubly true for long-lead magazines like Maxim, and sometimes it’s tough to tell which approach is worse: neglect a record that’s sure to be in the public conversation, or pass a less-than-fully-formed judgment? There may be a better reason for this than what Maxim is offering to the Associated Press, which breaks new ground in non-explanation explanations:

“Maxim will continue to provide our readers with information that is important to them, whether it is about fashion, lifestyle, technology, music, movies and more.”

As for us, we’re mostly confused by the specificity of the rating (what imaginary sonic quality earned them that extra half star in Peisner’s mind?) and saddened that we may not be able to trust Maxim’s profiles of buxom young actresses portraying “Murdered Sorority Sister #4″ in forthcoming Eli Roth films. And yet, there’s also the possibility that this might be some kind of back-room PR stunt to get people talking about a new Black Crowes album they wouldn’t ordinarily have considered. In that case, we tip our hats to you, Chris Robinson, as there’s no better way to attract the music media’s attention than to make your band the center of a music media scandal.

For more updates and breaking news check out Soundboard.

Save/Share: